Toronto's first city-owned rink in 40 years: A Leaside success story

Peter Kuitenbrouwer: The East York Hockey League, as it was then known, played its first six seasons, 1945-51, on an outdoor rink. Players changed in shacks heated by coal stoves.

In 1949, Stan Wadlow, director of recreation in the then-Township of East York — who worked out of his house on Queensdale Avenue — contacted Arthur Dyson at the local Kiwanis Club and, Mr. Wadlow writes in his memoirs, East York Recreation — The Early Years (Centennial College Press, 1982) “together we set up the case for the arena.” They hired a man named Ted Steadman to manage their “Build the Arena” fundraising campaign.

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The East York Memorial Arena, built with fundraised dollars and a $200,000 city debenture, and named in memory of locals who died in two world wars, opened Oct. 1, 1951.

This context is vital when looking at a capital budget proposal coming to city council next week, put forward by volunteers in Leaside, to add a second pad of ice to the Leaside Memorial Community Gardens. In a campaign run by Charlene Kalia, a Chestnut Park real estate agent, Leaside locals have raised about $2.25-million towards the project (including $1-million from an anonymous donor). Among 839 individual and corporate donations: $1,000 from Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, who played hockey there as a boy.

Under the proposal, the city will front the arena management board $7.5-million (called “recoverable debt”) and contribute $1-million; Ontario will loan the project $1.5-million. By raising the price of an hour of prime-time ice from $240 to $280 on both pads (once the new rink opens in 2013) the board plans to pay back the loans over 25 years. Toronto gets a new public rink at minimal cost to taxpayers.

Councillor Janet Davis (Beaches-East York), while promising to vote for the project, called it unfair during discussions at the budget committee this week.

“This model of building infrastructure is possible only in those communities with the capacity for an ambitious self-directed project,” she tells me at City Hall. “The costs for rink time will be very high. Some community groups will not be able to pay for that ice time. It concerns me that other communities around the city that still need rinks or cricket pitches or soccer-field improvements won’t be able to achieve those if this becomes the model.”

Ms. Davis, however, forgets that this precise model is the one that was used to build the arena in her very own ward. Similarly, the Lions Club and Kiwanis Club led the fundraising to build the first pad of ice in Leaside, which also opened in 1951.

Far from kvetching, Ms. Davis and everyone on council should celebrate Leaside’s initiative, which will give Toronto its first new pad of city-owned ice in about 40 years (and free up four hours of prime-time ice at East York Arena currently used by the Leaside Women’s Hockey Association).

“We have been begging for ice for years,” says Art Kennedy, president of the East York Hockey Association, which turned away 100 kids this fall for lack of ice. “You gotta take what ice you can get these days.”

Expecting City Hall to finance or even plan new rinks is a fool’s errand: Mayor David Miller failed to build a new four-plex arena in the Port lands, even with $34-million in federal money on the table; Councillor Paula Fletcher (Toronto-Danforth) insists the idea is alive: “With the acceleration project in the Portlands, the four-pad arena should be part of the mix.”

The cities around Toronto aren’t investing in new rinks, either. Stepping into the breach are private entrepreneurs: arenas such as the PowerAde Centre in Brampton, Rinx and Canlan are already charging $300 to $400 per hour for prime-time ice.

Local Councillor John Parker (Don Valley West), whose advocacy for a second Leaside ice pad helped propel him to city council, notes that, with so little ice time available in Leaside, his own son Calvin, 14, practices every Saturday with the Leaside Flames select team at the privately owned Canlan Victoria Park arena, near Steeles Avenue, paying about $300 an hour, plus tax, for ice. Leaside teams estimate they will save one million kilometres a year in mileage when the new rink opens; plus they will spend more money at local restaurants.

“Both our hockey organizations said they would for sure be willing to pay $280 [plus HST] for prime-time ice,” says Paul Mercer, an insurance adjuster who heads the fundraising committee for Leaside’s new ice pad. (All three of his sons are alumni of the Leaside Hockey Association). “A lot of ice is at private rates which are much, much higher, which is why we want to open this ice and reduce that use.”

Mr. Mercer points out that many in Ms. Davis’s ward (just across the Leaside Bridge) already skate at Leaside, including the entire Grade 2 class at Thorncliffe Public School, who skate free on Tuesdays with 75 pairs of skates donated by Canadian Tire.

Ms. Kalia, the real estate agent, suggests that less affluent communities might actually have an easier sell raising private money for their own community ice rink.

“I approached [a wealthy local businessman] for funding,” she says. “He said, Charlene, it’s a great thing you’re doing, but it’s an affluent neighbourhood. I think you guys will be fine.”

Indeed, one hopes other neighbourhoods will seize on this model to build more rinks; community-owned facilities will remain more accessible to the public over time.

Ever the provocateur, Mr. Parker reworks a Winston Churchill quote to needle Ms. Davis’s world view: “Capitalism is the uneven sharing of blessing. Socialism is the even sharing of misery.”